Bill Clinton and I have been travelling together for ten months. Or more specifically, that's how long I've been lugging a hardback copy of his autobiography - "My Life" - around Australia, Russia and now New Zealand. I bought it in Sydney for $40 (daylight robbery!) not long after it came out as I'm interested in politics and have read various books on his presidency and other autobiographies of those involved in his campaigns and administration. I thought it had to be at least vaguely readable by default: fascinating and complex person, eventful life... leads to interesting book, right? Well, turns out: not so much. "My Life" ranks as one of the dullest books I've ever struggled through - it was full of boring details, policy minutae and was written almost day by day (as in "On May 7th, we continued budget negotiations. On May 8th, I vetoed...."). The bits that weren't lists of legislative initiatives and names were mainly self-justifying "I'm a wonderful, sincere person and they're all just out to get me" rants. Terrible!

Since I'd paid so much for it and don't like admitting defeat, I vowed to plough through it. I'm a pretty fast reader under normal circumstances, but this bad boy took me ten months to finish - and that's bearing in mind I had an incentive to get to the end quickly as I was having to carry the 957 page (not including rambling acknowledgements or unnecessarily comprehensive index) monster on my back for thousands of miles.

The end has finally come, however, and Bill and I parted company in Dunedin. I tried to flog or swap the book at some second hand book exchanges in the city, but no one would take it as they said it wouldn't sell. Fair enough. Eventually, I dumped it at a charity bookstall where they said it would be priced at 50 cents. And you know what? That's 50 cents too much.